[X] My Assistant

Speaking of melee, what's the secret of survivability for melee players ? High block + evade ?

Colman said most. In my case parry come also into play. DW works also on that. Evade is for light user generally. I have some of course, due to Shadow Veil, but it's my less efficient way to avoid damages.

A level ~200 full plate user should be able to survive 50 rounds in IWBTH grindfest.
Mage cannot survive in IWBTH more than 10 rounds, at least not for my non-upgraded phase armor at my level.

To be more precise: if you are a lvl ~200 Heavy armour melee, with the right equips you should be surviving TnT at BT. IWBTH Grindfest starts mobs off at 50% attack power, so this should not even be an issue.

Mages, on the other hand, can in fact survive IWBTH well past the 10-round mark. The trick is actually to cast a serious number of buffs in the beginning (Haste, SV, SS, SoL on IA if possible, Regen II), and to case in turn Weaken + Silence (+ Imperil) on all mobs. Then take your time blasting every mofo off the face of the planet.

By no means is this fast. It's in fact very, very slow (unless you have T3 AoE spells, and Imperil does speed things up significantly). But eminently doable. What makes it even more doable is if you used Scrolls as well (and infusions can help, to some degree). But you're not gonna have mages blasting their way through Round 500 of GF (unless they're using Arcanist Shade and Battlecaster weapons/buckler, in which case one could argue they're not really maging).

It depends on the gear, to make it to 50 rounds on IWBTH you need some pretty decent stuff. I'm using superior/exquisite and I can barely make it to 20. I don't have any hath perks however, so if you're running IA, rainbow aura etc then exquisite + mag should get you to 50 rounds.

I think I'll try again when I get 250 (aura upgrades), hopefully I'll be able to make it to further then.

DW+Light armour can make it to 50 rounds on IWBTH (Endgame Arena), so I don't see any issues with GF. True, I'm running IA1, but that only saves a few turns, hardly anything to talk about (I don't run SoL, so it doesn't actually save mana for me). I've got ONE magni kevlar; the rest are superior and exquisite.

1H + Shield + Shield armour can probably kill your way through TnT on IWBTH, though it's likely to take a few hours.

High HP, END, and PMI. Also, an void estoc. Assuming you do not have crazy upgraded weapon.
edit: also IA 1 for protection (some people use haste on the first IA slot)

I've been test-driving my maxed Astral Estoc. It's only a fine, but wow! About 95% of the time, it goes through mobs like sharks through surfers. The other 5%, I get a lineup of 9 badass mobs and spark once or twice. Until TenB gets rid of it, Soul is almost like another Void Strike for many mobs.

IA1 should always be used for Protection when using Heavy (because you have initiative on Turn 1, so you can always simply cast Haste). But as you say, to each his own.

To be more precise: if you are a lvl ~200 Heavy armour melee, with the right equips you should be surviving TnT at BT. IWBTH Grindfest starts mobs off at 50% attack power, so this should not even be an issue.

I highly doubt this is still the case after HTTP's crystal rampage, yesterday's IWBTH RE took 2 godly mana potions and a godly spirit potion after 4 or so spark procs.

Does difficulty affect token drop chance?

This post has been edited by aloc1234: Feb 18 2013, 19:32

Nope.

… IWBTH RE … 2 godly mana potions …

(IMG:[s12.postimage.org] http://s12.postimage.org/okyrrad19/Z1e_Iy.gif)

This post has been edited by aurabolt: Feb 18 2013, 20:41

I highly doubt this is still the case after HTTP's crystal rampage, yesterday's IWBTH RE took 2 godly mana potions and a godly spirit potion after 4 or so spark procs.

A ~LV200 player probably can survive 50 IWBTH grindfest. It suddently become very hard when player start to encounter Elia 501.

Nope.

hahah that's great. Thanks.

I've been doing the schoolgirls arena in Hell just to get tokens, now I can go easy on them ~~

hahah that's great. Thanks.

I've been doing the schoolgirls arena in Hell just to get tokens, now I can go easy on them ~~

Why would you do schoolgirls for tokens? GF would be way better&faster than that. Unless you're talking about trophies (which are also not affected by difficulty, flat 10% chance, before you ask.)

-snip

I do RE with heavy because building OC for rending blow is annoying as fuck on the first round. It sucked

A ~LV200 player probably can survive 50 IWBTH grindfest. It suddently become very hard when player start to encounter Elia 501.

In battletoads/IWBTH you can still see lots of those PL 1000 monsters, so while 501st is gone I think it's gotten worse overall.

Maybe not 200 straight off, but by around 210, with about 30-35 extra APs invested via trainings and/or artifacts so the available gauge tanks are all filled along with most of the OC tanks and at least 3/5 pack rat, BT Trio is definitely possible for estoc/heavy with great stamina.
Not a faceroll by any means and you may have to use weaken/silence tactically on the odd occasion, but definitely possible if you pay attention. Cannot rely on spark though, since it'll end up triggering every 3-4 rounds unless you can consistently clear the rounds within single figure turns. Better to spread the hits to your spirit bar gradually over time with spirit shield.

You cannot compare BT and IWBTH yet though. Doubling mob hp alone means in many cases mobs have an effective overall extra ~2x damage multipler simply from attrition, other things being equal.

This post has been edited by Herp in your Derp: Feb 18 2013, 20:24

Straight off 200 works too … for any melee build. (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

I do RE with heavy …

Yeah, I know. I was backing away from whatever the mana cost must be while wearing heavy.

Why would you do schoolgirls for tokens? GF would be way better&faster than that. Unless you're talking about trophies (which are also not affected by difficulty, flat 10% chance, before you ask.)

No no, I refer to chaos tokens.

I remember being able to do BT trio at level 220 or so consistently with light; 2 weeks ago I could do IWBTH trio with light and BT with heavy. Currently not sure anymore, too many targets need cleaving. It helps if you have a bunch of hath perks though (Still 250 from rainbow...)

No no, I refer to chaos tokens.

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

This post has been edited by fishinsea: Feb 18 2013, 20:58

I remember being able to do BT trio at level 220 or so consistently with light; 2 weeks ago I could do IWBTH trio with light and BT with heavy. Currently not sure anymore, too many targets need cleaving. It helps if you have a bunch of hath perks though (Still 250 from rainbow...)
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Can you post your equips and what hath perks please?

Can you post your equips and what hath perks please?

Outdated info probably, back then every monster was below PL 1000 except for 501st and sakurai kei so there was nothing much that needs weakening/slowing and a rending blow pretty much covers every round. No hath perks, high-evade exquisite fleet stuff and an ethereal mace.

Outdated info probably, back then every monster was below PL 1000 except for 501st and sakurai kei so there was nothing much that needs weakening/slowing and a rending blow pretty much covers every round. No hath perks, high-evade exquisite fleet stuff and an ethereal mace.

Hmm sounds about right, coupled with the recent batch of nerfs seems life as a newbie is getting rougher.

Things haven't really changed in my opinion. :\

Sure, Domino Strike got nerfed, but we have new toys such as Void Strike now.

This post has been edited by aurabolt: Feb 18 2013, 21:45

Things haven't really changed in my opinion.

Sure, Domino Strike got nerfed, but we have new toys (such as Void Strike) now.

It was more drastic for newbies imo. Take the burden/interference change for example, for higher levels it didn't mean much but for lower levels it really hurt.

Then there was the change to remove curative, when I was low level my curative was something like 50-60 points higher from a lot of grinding. Sure supportive caught up in the end but it was a pain for quite some time.

Oh and the nerf to auras, sure we can activate them all now but the left over auras (magic crit for melee) are only good for the EXP. The old mitigation was a lot for newbies (I still have 0 across the board).

It's all the little stuff like like that builds up, might not seem like much but for us newbies they did sting.

This post has been edited by desert storm: Feb 18 2013, 21:49

^I grinded my prof in no time above my curative prof. The additional mitigation nerf didn't really do anything.

I can say that I got more of a buff than a nerf with the recent updates.

Then there was the change to remove curative, when I was low level my curative was something like 50-60 points higher from a lot of grinding. Sure supportive caught up in the end but it was a pain for quite some time.

Not sure about what you mean, supportive prof has been replaced by the highest of both.